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What Money Can Do: Examining the Effects of Rewards on Online Romance Fraudsters’ Deceptive Strategies

Timothy Dickinson ; Fangzhou Wang ; David Maimon (2023) — Deviant Behavior

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DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2023.2197547 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   United States
Tags:   Deception Strategies, Email Experiment, Financial Reward, Interpersonal Deception, Rational Choice, Romance Scams, Thematic Content Analysis
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Synopsis

            
This field experiment sent standardized sequential emails to 500 addresses reported on Stop-scammers.com and varied promised or delivered Amazon gift-card rewards. Ninety-four suspected active fraudsters replied, and two researchers thematically coded the exchanges. They identified seven deception strategies: self-presentation, shaping the target's identity, relationship cues, money requests, requests for identifying information, moves to off-platform communication, and interactional facilitation. Communication strategies changed repeatedly as the apparent reward changed, providing behavioral evidence that offenders adapt to perceived payoff. Some addresses may have shared an operator or been misidentified, recipients may have suspected the experiment, and the sample may not represent male-persona, cryptocurrency, or other platform-based schemes.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
Prior romance-fraud research primarily used victims’ accounts, leaving fraudster-derived evidence on deception strategies limited. The paper identifies a further gap in understanding whether fraudsters change tactics as perceived financial reward changes, how victims’ behaviors shape those changes, and whether interpersonal-deception processes apply to romance fraudsters.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
The authors scraped e-mail addresses reported on stop-scammers.com in 2020, randomly assigned 500 addresses to three experimental conditions, and sent standardized sequential e-mails posing as a potential victim. The messages varied promised and delivered Amazon gift-card rewards. The final sample comprised 94 fraudsters who replied. Using NVivo, two authors independently conducted thematic content analysis of exchanges; no coding differences were reported.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
Addresses may have been controlled by the same individual; some people listed on stop-scammers.com may have been misidentified as fraudsters; and recipients may have found the initial e-mails suspicious, limiting observation of natural behavior. Generalizability is unknown because the sample may not represent fraudsters using male personas, crypto-romance schemes, or other platforms.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Future research should test whether the identified strategies and reward responses generalize to fraudsters using male personas, crypto-romance scams, and other websites or apps. It should also examine whether different scam types use distinct manipulation strategies or respond differently to changing rewards.

          

              

    
    

        
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